Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, has donated $1 million to President-elect Donald Trump's inaugural fund, the latest in CEO Mark Zuckerberg's efforts to bolster relations with the incoming administration. There's no record of Meta contributing to any other inaugural committee in the past.
The news was first reported by the Wall Street Journal and confirmed by a Meta spokesperson to other news outlets.
The hefty contribution comes two weeks after Zuckerberg dined with Trump at Mar-a-Lago, the president-elect's estate in Florida. Trump advisor Stephen Miller said at the time that Zuckerberg had "made clear that he wants to support the national renewal of America under Trump's leadership."
It's a turnaround of sorts from the aftermath of Jan. 6, 2021, when Meta barred Trump from posting on its platforms on the grounds that he had directly provoked the violent assault by his supporters on the U.S. Capitol. The company restored his accounts in early 2023 with restrictions, before lifting the restrictions in July of that year. Trump has threatened to imprison Zuckerberg if he stepped out of line and falsely accused him of making a $350 million investment in rigged voting technology designed to undermine his election campaign.
Zuckerberg is not the only tech billionaire seeking to get on Trump's good side. Earlier this month, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos observed that he had “grown in the past eight years" and has scheduled a Mar-a-Lago dinner date of his own. For Zuckerberg, Bezos and other Big Tech giants, a Trump administration offers both peril and opportunity: While Trump has inveighed against technology companies for purportedly censoring conservative viewpoints, he has also stacked his incoming administration with corporate-friendly billionaires and promised a broad deregulation agenda, which Bezos has praised.
